Should human beings remain in control of planet Earth? Or should we be replaced as the dominant species? As absurd as these questions may sound, and as obvious as the answers may seem, the Big Tech oligarchs funding the artificial-intelligence revolution have responded in ways that should alarm all of us. Here is what some of the richest people on Earth have said: Sam Altman: AI would allow humans to become “the first species ever to design our own descendants.” Humans can either “fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what a successful merge looks like.” “I believe the merge has already started.” Dario Amodei: “We don’t know if the models are conscious,” but “we’re open to the idea that it could be.” Elon Musk: “Propagating super intelligence to the stars is a great success condition for a biological bootloader.” Put simply, Musk is saying that humans are merely a step toward digital superintelligence. Peter Thiel, when asked if he would prefer that the human race endure: “Uh … Well, I don’t know. I would—I would … There’s so many questions implicit in this,” before reluctantly conceding that humans should survive. If these were the fantasies of teenage boys obsessed with science fiction, we could laugh them off. They are not. These are the foundational beliefs of the most powerful people in the world, who are mobilizing trillions of dollars to turn them into reality. Humanity must not allow a handful of multibillionaires to recklessly attempt to replace us. We must place an immediate pause on advanced-AI development and ban artificial superintelligence—an artificial mind smarter than any human, capable of operating independently beyond our control—until a new federal body is able to ensure the technology’s safety.